


Splinters

by Immicolia



Series: Displaced-verse [2]
Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Coping with trauma, M/M, Other, Torture, rape imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 05:45:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immicolia/pseuds/Immicolia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Side-story for "Displaced".  In which Shinichi is attempting to pull himself back together after escaping Nebula.  And his mind conjures up physical analogues for everything his splinterselves went through in keeping the centre safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Splinters

**Author's Note:**

> Set slightly prior to chapter 14 of "Displaced".

The creature that calls himself Tsukumoya Shinichi does not need to sleep in any recognizable sense of the word. He doesn't sleep but occasionally ( _very_ occasionally) he'll slip into a sort of standby mode. Performing a quiet sort of defragging of his mental processes, a cleanup and reorganization of the things he knows to streamline his cognitive process.

The closest human analogue would be meditation but it's more than that, especially at the moment as he attempts to gather together all the loose bits of himself to sort out and repair the mess Nebula made of him. His awareness skimming carefully over all the various gouges and scars left behind. Dark patches where it seems as if bits are missing.

It's a mistake though, to assume that the empty places are where things were taken from him never to be restored. He realizes that when he carefully starts to poke at one of them to assess the damage. Darkness flaring out and swallowing him whole into memories of a splinterself that he threw before the wolves.

The dark is not things he has lost so much as things he doesn't want to remember. The odd points of reference from spending time in a body giving shape to actions that really have none. A too sharp illusion of hands holding him down while he kicks and screams and tries to fight back against this gang of faceless monsters. Every single motion useless and he's crying and pleading for mercy while They cut him open and examine what spills out. A bloody rush of everything he is, grarbled white noise of scrambled data. Clips and fragments of audio and video. Still images. Flashes of colour and a piercing horrifying sound that he realizes must be him after a moment.

And somewhere in the middle of his helpless thrashing he catches a glimpse of one and the disappointment on his face. Disappointment and annoyance because _this is not what They are looking for_. They want something they can _use_. It has to be here underneath all the junk data, doesn't it?

It's a methodical violation, spreading open everything he is and after a while he is too pain-numb to even struggle. Staring blankly while scrambled bits are shoved aside while They look for some unnamed thing, some perfect bit of code that will apparently make him make sense, and it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts....

He ripples, shudders, _tears_ apart into nothing in such a way that he jerks out of standby. No longer calm and steady and carefully taking stock of himself.

He knows exactly how his mental state is and it isn't pretty. Running a quick count of just how many dark spots, how many gouges, there are in his consciousness.

How many dead selves did he throw into straight into the teeth and claws of those monsters to keep the whole safe?

Twenty. Fifty. Ninety....

Too many. After all, They nearly destroyed him completely in the end.

He pulls himself back together and sides back into standby. It's hard to say if the bit he was poking at is better or worse from it. It's still dull and a bit discoloured, throbbing painfully away in the back of his mind. But it doesn't overwhelm him when he runs a careful touch over it a second time. Like maybe exposing it to the metaphorical air has assisted in the healing.

One slowly healing, more than a hundred to go.

Of course, he could leave them. He could live with blank patches. They don't adversely affect his ability to function in any overt way. He could leave them and get on with his life, such as it is right now.

He could, but he won't. He won't allow himself to. And with only the slightest hesitation he reaches out to examine the next dead spot.

Once he's staying one step ahead of them. There isn't much room to maneuver but somehow he's doing it. He's staying ahead and thinking that maybe, maybe, somehow he can do this. He can get away from them. Then one of them shoots and his whole body goes numb for a moment before the pain truly starts to register and he crumples to the ground. The pack of them falling on him shortly and one of them has a hunting knife and it's all just a repeat of the first one he watched (relived) with a wash of brightly coloured blood and skin peeled back and disappointed faces when They don't find what they're looking for once they've finished gutting him.

Another time he's strapped to a gurney while They cut his skull open. Heading straight for the source and his inability to _see_ just what they're doing adds to the crushing panic. It's more terror than pain this time around. Not that they're gentle, not that he doesn't die there, but he's strangely numb through most of it. Numb and immobilized and unable to scream.

Once it's something purely electric. Needles and sparks under his skin. Probing carefully for the secrets They know are there. They'll tease it out. They'll make him spill his true self verbally as opposed to cutting him open and looking for it. But he bites his lips and tongue until they bleed brightly down his chin, coming apart in a burst of sparks before he breathes a word.

And once it's Izaya (which makes no sense no sense no sense at all) pressed in close while he's bound and gagged in some twisted up reversal of the last thing they did together. It's Izaya holding him down and spreading him open and fucking him, fast and brutal, while he screams and screams and screams behind that gag. Everything blurring for a moment in a haze of pain and then it stops being Izaya (it never was it never was) but there's the sharp edge of a knife at his throat while that cruel body presses deeper and deeper. Viciously searching out the absolute core of him and in a fit of panic he jerks his head to the side and slits his own throat. Bleeding a faint haze of sparking neon green and behind the gag and around the blood that is choking him he laughs and laughs and laughs because he will kill himself a thousand times over before letting any of them near the deepest part of him.

That time was the closest They got and they try it again. And again. And again.

His splinters apparently managed enough control to self-destruct every time. Always lasting long enough to keep Them distracted but ending everything when They got too close, keeping the centre safe even while he was oblivious to the worst of it.

After a while he stops, pulls himself out of standby and back from the edge. He can't do it all in one day. If anything he's risking traumatizing himself worse by rushing things along. By forcing himself to face horror after horror after horror and relive one day, fifteen hours and twenty-five minutes worth of torture in a compressed time frame.

He'll come back to it a bit later.

He _will_ be whole again.

He'll _force_ himself to be whole


End file.
